New report scales back global warming:

AlGore and the Hysterics hardest hit.
Very short version: "Oh my, we were wrong, but THERE'S STILL GLOBAL WARMING!"


Now this would be interesting to be part of:
Researchers are to go into battle using replica Bronze Age weapons to help them understand how people at the time fought.

Using imitation swords, axes, spears and shields, researchers at Newcastle University are to recreate Bronze Age combat.

The weapons will then be studied using sophisticated use-wear analysis techniques to see how the marks and damage compares with Bronze Age weapons in museum collections.
One of my first thoughts is answered in the article: they are using shields; as with bronze you'd be even more interested in not beating your weapons against each other than you would be with iron or steel, that bodes well for the research.

That's one of the things that annoyed hell out of me in the Lord of the Rings trilogy: seeing the Rohirrim ride into battle with their damned shields slung on the horses instead of being on their arm where they belonged.


Hmmm...
It wasn’t ever seriously in doubt, but the FBI yesterday acknowledged that it secretly took control of Freedom Hosting last July, days before the servers of the largest provider of ultra-anonymous hosting were found to be serving custom malware designed to identify visitors.
Supposedly to try to track kiddie porn traffickers; however, being as out of trust as I am, I'm wondering what else they may have been doing, and to who?


Back to that shields thing:
Big constant in most every society that had swords was shields: the shield to defend, freeing the sword for attack.  Yes, you can kill with a shield and otherwise use it as a weapon but its primary purpose is to protect you so you can try to subdivide the other guy with your sword.

There's another purpose there, too: blocking a sword or axe-stroke with your sword is bad for its health.  Best you can hope for is a nick in the edge, and it goes downhill from there: small nick or BIG nick or crack or break.  So for most of the history of swords you made a point of not using it to block the other guys' blade.

Somewhere I have a magazine that includes a bit from a norse saga about a chief who took some men to a meeting with another chief.  Took along as part of his group a younger guy(about 17-18 as I recall) who was related.  During the course of the meet the young guy and a man from the other group took a serious dislike to each other and a challenge to duel was offered and accepted.

As a mark of 'This is my man' the chief loaned the kid his own sword.  The kid won, but near the end did use the sword to block the other guys stroke, and nicked the blade.  The chief congratulated him on his victory, then tore a strip off him for damaging his sword, 'especially since you could better have sidestepped to avoid the blow than block it.'

The things you pick up over time...

To quote Mr. Pratchett:

"The library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to the shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain."

I'd forgotten this; it needs to be stuck up in prominent places to remind us of what's at stake whenever some statist control freak(I'm looking at you clowns, Feinstein and Durbin) try once more to restrict speech.

If the dog doesn't like the sitter,

there may be reason why.

Well done, critter.


Found thanks to Uncle, some really neat high-speed photography.


Sounds like the right penalty to me: hang the bastards.

I have been informed on Bookface that

Banning some guns isn't the same as banning all guns, therefore I'm worrying about nothing.  And paranoid.
Also controlling how much ammo I can buy and own is just common-sense safety.

That only 'right winged media' tells lies about the Brit NHS(y'know, like the Guardian and Daily Mail and so forth).

And pointing out the slight problem with 'If we don't ban EVERYTHING, then it's all good!" and that most Brit media isn't exactly 'right-wing', well, that demonstrates that you're not 'fit enough to own a gun'.

I've come to the conclusion that the gun bigots and hoplophobes infesting the Starbucks Appreciation Page aren't just that: they truly are control freaks who'd like to put Bloomberg in the Oval Office and give him unlimited power.

You want an actual war on women to yell about?

Here it is.
In defiance of a “taliban like” law, Amira Osman Hamed faces flogging for refusing to wear a hijab and covering her hair. Under Sudanese law all women are required to cover their hair with a "hijab," a headscarf worn by Muslim women.


According to the Atlantic, Time managing editor Rick Stengel's decision to join the Obama administration is just the latest example of a new trend among mainstream media journalists who are making it official by joining the Obama administration. Stengel, who is joining the State Department, is just one of 15 (or 19) who have given up a career in journalism to join Obama's crusade to fundamentally transform America: 
There's also video of who Feinstein & Co. think worthy of receiving 1st Amendment protection as 'journalists'; guess which kind of people that covers?


And were was that 'red line' actually first heard from?  Why, the Smartest Woman In The World!
And both the minister and I saw eye to eye on the many tasks that are ahead of us, and the kinds of contingencies that we have to plan for, including the one you mentioned in the horrible event that chemical weapons were used. And everyone has made it clear to the Syrian regime that is a red line for the world, [italics mine] what would that mean in terms of response and humanitarian and medical emergency assistance, and of course, what needs to be done to secure those stocks from every being used, or from falling into the wrong hands.
Which doesn't change that Obama used the term too.  Wonder why none of those 'trained and certified journalists' brought this up before?


The lawyers and Democrats are still trying to get Holder off on the contempt charge.


And from the Illinois Supremes:
The Illinois Supreme Court, citing federal gun rights cases won by the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, today ruled unanimously that a section of state gun law violated the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and affirmed that this right extends outside the home.
More from Volokh here.
Bloomberg, socialist bastardsDemocrats and gun bigots hardest hit.


This just in: SUCK IT, MARYLAND!
Maryland’s requirement that residents show a “good and substantial reason” to get a handgun permit is unconstitutional, according to a federal judge’s opinion filed Monday.
This on top of the ruling from Illinois the other day; wow!

Because privacy is for attorney generals hiding information on their crimes,

not commoners trying to live their lives.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials are seeking to monitor four out of every five U.S. consumer credit card transactions this year — up to 42 billion transactions – through a controversial data-mining program, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Giron makes 'sore loser' take on new meaning

It can't possibly be that she pissed off the electorate, oh no, it's SUPPRESSION!!!

More here.


A bunch of politicians with axes to grind deciding who's a 'real' journalist who should have 1st Amendment protection(and what the protections will be);  yeah, that'll work well.


Because some socialists are more tolerable than others(just don't mention the body count).
Borrowing from Insty,
MEH. I DON’T THINK PODHORETZ should have apologized. Marxists are just Nazis with better PR. People should be as ashamed of Marxism as of Nazism, and the only way that will happen is if other people shame them. And don’t apologize.

"Mr. President, are they using monofilament or silk

for your strings?"
Whatever it is, it's got to be strong to handle all the jerking around he's getting.


If this works out, it'll give people a big hand up in large parts of the world.


Yes, Lerner's a liar.  And a criminal.  And morally corrupt.  And still collecting a paycheck.
And Democrats still want to pretend it's no big deal.


I hope this makes the NSA chase their own tail so badly they get a hernia.


I don't know if Morgan's the dumbest man alive, but he's damn sure in the running.


More deeds by the people Obama wants us to give weapons and other support to(of course, after arming the cartels this probably doesn't look too bad to him).

Yeah, there's a reason they're called 'bird cuisinarts'

Wind energy facilities have killed at least 67 golden and bald eagles in the last five years, but the figure could be much higher, according to a new scientific study by government biologists.
...
Still, the scientists said their figure is likely to be "substantially" underestimated, since companies report eagle deaths voluntarily and only a fraction of those included in their total were discovered during searches for dead birds by wind-energy companies. The study also excluded the deadliest place in the country for eagles, a cluster of wind farms in a northern California area known as Altamont Pass. Wind farms built there decades ago kill more than 60 per year.
Isn't that just friggin' wonderful?  And it gets even better: to borrow from Jay,
My real beef, though, is this:

The research affirms an AP investigation in May, which revealed dozens of eagle deaths from wind energy facilities and described how the Obama administration was failing to fine or prosecute wind energy companies, even though each death is a violation of federal law.

Got that? These wind mill farms are committing federal crimes and not being prosecuted for them. Sound familiar? Their  machinery is causing the death of a protected species - if it were a coal mine killing condors by the hundreds every year, this would be front page news and WON'T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING TO SAVE THE CONDOR. But because this is shiny happy "alternative power" we look the other way. I'll tell you something, folks. If I ran over a hundred eagles in a year, they'd have me in a Hannibal Lecter cage faster than you could say Earthf**ker...

Phase 4 of The Experiment

Data points located further down

Sheriff George David: "I can do whatever I want,

and the law is what I say it is."
In a pigs ass it is.
Since it appears the only thing he'll listen to, sue him.  Personally.  And throw his ass out of office at the first opportunity.

Which is in direct opposition to
Schoharie County Sheriff Tony Desmond said he has no intention of enforcing the law, and that his office won’t do anything that would cause law-abiding citizens to turn in their weapons or arrest them for possessing firearms.

“I’m not going back on my personal conviction,” he said. Residents have told him this is what they want, he said, and “I’ve stood up for them, and I will continue to do so.”


In a paradise where only the government has guns.
It was frightening that local police could stop by our home to pound on the doors at night and search us for no good reason. People were arrested without court papers and locked up for months without trials.

Citizens were not allowed to have any guns or they would be put into prison, or worse. Chinese people were helpless when they needed to defend themselves. I grew up with fear, like millions of other children — fear that the police would pound on our doors at night and take my loved ones away, fear that bad guys would come to rob us. Sometimes I could not sleep from hearing the screaming people outside.

There were many stories of local people defending themselves with kitchen knives and sticks. Women were even more helpless when they were attacked and raped. I was molested as a college student once while walking home at night. It was common then.

When it came to dealing with the Chinese government and police brutality, there was nothing we could do. They had guns, while law-abiding citizens did not.


More on Benghazi.  Not from Obama or Clinton, they're still stonewalling and lying their faces off.
To begin with, Benghazi was a CIA operation involving weapons, one which had no cover beyond a small mission that provided a diplomatic fig leaf for the effort. Officially the CIA was there to track and collect dangerous weapons left over from the war that ousted Qaddafi. But the evidence suggests the CIA was also either tacitly or actively involved in a multi-national effort to ship those weapons to Syrian rebels. Our covert effort in Benghazi, Libya was connected to our escalating involvement in Syria.

If you're looking for a flashlight,

LAPG has a sale on these two: 800 and 730 lumens, 40 and 30 bucks respectively.


They miss something about the Bloomberg Backlash: He's a nasty little control freak who wants to control what we eat, how much, how we can cook it as well as what we're allowed to own, and wants to buy elections to push his and his minions views, and people are sick of it.


"If you don't give us what we want, we'll make milk too expensive for poor kids to drink!"
Why does Collin Peterson hate poor children so?


Killer kangaroos(should that be 'assault 'roos?) and a Demon Duck of Doom; all kinds of things we still don't know about in this rocks' history.
Borrowing a comment on Michael Williamsons' bookface: Australia, a land where poisonous snakes are afraid to go out alone...
A: would fangs make them 'assault 'roos'?
B: and would the sabretooth be a high-capacity AR?


Apparently surprising the hell out of Democrats, all kinds of people consider the 2nd Amendment important.
Also, they have little tolerance for control-freak lying bastard politicians who consider the voters naught but tokens.  To be insulted at need.  And ignored when they don't fall into line.
 This recall isn't a battle of right versus left, conservative versus liberal. It's a citizen effort to end the reign of a politician who views the public - even his most liberal constituents - as fodder for the elite political class in Washington, Denver and New York.


More of the wonders of Obamacare.


Informant: because keeping leftists from firebombing a convention is against democracy, or something.


Snork... Are there white people who don't want black people to own guns? Yes. Their names are Mayor Bloomberg and Diane Feinstein.

When the .gov won't help you, it gets bad enough,

You do what you have to.
An audacious band of citizen militias battling a brutal drug cartel in the hills of central Mexico is becoming increasingly well-armed and coordinated in an attempt to end years of violence, extortion and humiliation.

What began as a few scattered self-defense groups has spread in recent months to dozens of towns across Michoacan, a volatile state gripped by the cultlike Knights Templar, a drug gang known for taxing locals on everything from cows to tortillas and executing those who do not comply.

They don't trust LE, they don't trust the army, and they have reason not to.  So,
The groups ring a church bell or shoot off fireworks, and thousands pour into the streets, he said.

“It’s curious,” the doctor said. “These people who had tied people up, blindfolded them and executed them, when we shoot, they run. I think they are afraid of us.”
He and others also wonder how they have been able to do what far-better-armed federal security forces have not.

“Just look at the military people — they have gear, they are trained, very capable,” said Pimentel, the butcher. “But here, the locals, the farmers, the workers, we are doing the job. Now we have to be sure those people are not coming back.”
You'll note that it mentions the carrying arms in a country were just about anything is illegal for the commoners; but the army seems to be giving a blind eye.  Knowing who the real enemy is, I'd guess.

Among the reasons DHS should be disbanded

President Barack Obama and his predecessors have maintained that people crossing into U.S. territory aren't protected by the Fourth Amendment. That policy is intended to allow for intrusive searches that keep drugs, child pornography and other illegal imports out of the country. But it also means the government can target travelers for no reason other than political advocacy if it wants, and obtain electronic documents identifying fellow supporters.
Doesn't exactly pass the Jews in the Attic test, does it?

Catherine Crump, an ACLU lawyer who represented House, said she doesn't understand why Congress or the White House are leaving the debate up to the courts.

"Ultimately, the Supreme Court will need to address this question because unfortunately neither of the other two branches of government appear motivated to do so," said Crump.

Well, hell, Crump, I can answer that: 

Some of them are too cowardly, and some just like having that power; that oath they took doesn't mean squat to them.

Evidence of the latter being that clown in the Oval Office telling us he can wage war without Congress having any say-so, and we need to blow hell out of Syria because his self-image is on the line*.

*no, he doesn't have the honor or integrity to say that outright.

Never forget,

and never forgive. Not for this.

What the hell has Blogger done now?

Tried to add a picture to the last post, and get a big Google 'to add from your online storage, sign in' box.
First, I don't HAVE anything in 'online storage'.
Second, THERE'S NO WAY TO CLOSE THE BOX.

What idiots' idea was this?

YES!! Up yours, Bloomberg! UPdated

To borrow from Sean,
"They call it a "Stunning Victory for the NRA," but the reality is that it was a stunning victory for a couple of guys who got angry and started a recall effort. The NRA gave them cash, but nowhere near as much cash as Bloomberg and Eli Broad gave to the gun banners. The money matchup, according to HuffPo was $3 million to about $540 thousand, and we STILL won. "

Huffpo has this article, in which they accuse the pro-rights people of 'voter suppression'(you had to call the cops over threats and intimidation?  Who's in jail, then?) and Bloomberg's minions saying it was actually a bad thing for the NRA because 'they couldn't recall everyone they wanted to', etc.'

Screw you, Bloomie; you lost.

And, as has been noted, not only because they're bigots on guns:
I am the first person from the national press that Knight has spoken to directly. “This is not about us,” he explains. “The new gun laws were just the catalyst. A lot of people are very upset about being ignored, so finding vocal moral support hasn’t really been a hard sell. There’s a lesbian couple that’s been very happy in helping us.” I raised my eyebrows at this. “I start there,” he adds, “because people say to me, ‘Well, they couldn’t possibly be interested in helping you.’ Well, sure they can! They care about protecting themselves, too.”

Update:
More here.
Based on the latest campaign disclosure reports, Morse/Giron enjoyed an 8:1 spending advantage over recall advocates, in terms of direct contributions to campaigns. Michael Bloomberg contributed $350,000 to fight the recalls, about equal to the $361,000 contributed by the NRA, which is probably about $3 per NRA member in the state. Another wealthy contributor gave $250,000 to oppose the recalls.

Bunch of links here.

A: Deputy Drummond goes to jail

B: Nail the sheriff's office, because there's not way they did NOT know what kind of jerk he is.


It should be noted that Kerry opened his fat mouth, Putin and Assad jumped in and kicked his tonsils.
And then Putin did it again.

I have this image of Putin looking at files and saying "Dance, puppet, dance."

Ouch: Caller just now: "The president's problem tonight is he had to give a speech with John Kerry's foot in his mouth"

Ouch again

The administration has cited satellite imagery and communications intercepts, backed by social media and intelligence reports from sources in Syria, as the basis for blaming the Assad government. But the only evidence the administration has made public is a collection of videos it has verified of the victims. The videos do not demonstrate who launched the attacks.
Probably because the NSA has been too busy reading our e-mail and listening to our calls and then lying about it to actually do intelligence work on the bad guys.
Does that now make them part of the bad guys?  I tend to think so.

Solomon Kane

I liked it.

Yeah, some liberties taken with the character; but you could see this in the backstory of the man in the Howard stories.  And they get points for his pistols being wheellocks, proper for the period.

Not a bad movie at all.

Stolen from Irish:

Here we see the female of the species perched on the edge of the watering hole, preparing for the day.

Yeah, it's Monday Update on shaving section

Hey, who cares about that icky hand-to-hand stuff, right? It's all old-fashioned, right? Won't hurt to trash it, right?
People who don't care about readiness to fight and win, but care very much about getting their ticket punched for being 'fiscally responsible' and PC, who also don't care about who they'll get killed by trashing serious training.


Speaking of PC idiots,
Some parents want to know why Emmaus High School’s championship rifle team was not included in the school’s new yearbook. They hoped to find out what happened at Monday night’s school board meeting. But no explanation was offered by school board members, the superintendent or other administrators at the meeting.
You damn well know 'why'; you also know now that the chickenshit administrators are hoping you'll go away and shut up. So this is the time to ASK them and DEMAND a damned answer; calls if need be, visits if possible, and if they try to talk around it, DON'T LET THEM.


Yeah, that "Let us be Green no matter the consequences!" actually HAS consequences; sucks, don't it?
Mr Tajani warned that Europe's quixotic dash for renewables was pushing electricity costs to untenable levels, leaving Europe struggling to compete as America's shale revolution cuts US natural gas prices by 80pc.

"I am in favour of a green agenda, but we can't be religious about this. We need a new energy policy. We have to stop pretending, because we can't sacrifice Europe's industry for climate goals that are not realistic, and are not being enforced worldwide," he told The Daily Telegraph during the Ambrosetti forum of global policy-makers at Lake Como. Of course, the same watermelons want to do the same things here, too.


Apparently there's a problem with the newer fancier- more expensive- razors: they're not selling well.
Have you seen the prices on the damn things? Around four bucks each. And if you're on a tight budget that doesn't look like such a good deal, even for a super-duper shave.

About four years back son came across a old safety razor in good shape at an antique store and bought it. Cleaned it up and looked around: blades, for basic from Wally World, Wilkinson are about two bucks for a pack of ten. He tried this soap and liked it better than canned, and finally settled on the Mitchell's and never went back.  I think he keeps a couple of disposables around just in case, otherwise hasn't touched one since he started.

Yeah, something like the Mitchell's soap looks expensive; consider that that container will last for months, and it's not so much.  Yeah, you need a brush; not exactly a big deal.
Update: I'll throw in, the Razor Emporium link covers a lot of stuff: blades, soap, brushes, and both straight and safety razors.  And restoration services for old ones.

Experiment: next stage

A bit down the page for those in sensitive environments

And how for your evening bitchi- ah, news

You might remember a while back some of those British (Special)Only Ones shot a guy in a car because 'he was shooting at us!' Eh, nazzo fast, Basil.
Scotland Yard had intelligence on Duggan eight months before his death on August 4 2011 and had been granted search warrants days before he was killed, a pre-inquest review heard today.

But the warrants were not acted on and instead the father of four was followed through the streets of London by police marksmen who eventually pulled his minicab over in Tottenham Hale and shot him dead.
Well, that might be a bit of a sticky wicket, eh wot?  Especially when
Initially officers claimed Duggan fired at them first, but later admitted they had given “inaccurate information".
I'll let you parse that wonderful piece of bullshit on your own.  I will point out that it appears the Brits are taking Gunwalker lessons.  Bad ones.
It has now been suggested that the gun which had been supplied to him by Kevin Hutchinson-Foster just minutes before his death had deliberately been kept on the streets.



Daughter of Reverend “God Damn America” Wright and 12 other Democrats are charged with embezzling $16 million in Federal health grants that should have gone to AIDS charities and other programs for the poor and needy. More than one of the defendants has direct ties to President Barack Obama. The Sun Times details the charges.
Well, isn't that special?



This is good: ten things they don't tell you when you buy a motorcycle.


Remember what I said about the Democrats cheating in Colorado?


I have discovered that if I fill that hummer feeder in the front yard, once the bees discover the buffet is open it takes maybe two hours for them to drain it. 

I wonder what the dance to tell the rest of the hive about it looks like?


Speaking of bike stuff, I got one of these skullcaps a while back; it's worth it.


Apparently the problem I'm having with Blogger and Firefox isn't new, so it's nothing in a new version; and other people get it on IE or Chrome or whatever.  Ain't that a pile of crap?


Haven't worn it all the time(not on a bike, for instance), but I am wearing my kilt as I can in support of Kilted to Kick Cancer.  I need to get a couple of pictures to torme- show you what it looks like.

Remember the RCMP stealing guns during a flood?

In a letter to Alberta's official opposition Wildrose Party, an official with the RCMP says officers did what they felt was necessary but "did not take operational direction from any elected officials or public service employees to enter in private homes" (link)

Read that last part again: The RCMP "did not take operational direction from any elected officials or public service employees to enter in private homes"

That is quite the admission. The RCMP entered locked private homes without a warrant and seized personal property ( This is not about guns. The property seized, had it been computers or even vacuum cleaners, is irrelevant) on their own without direction from any elected official or public service employee.Our correspondent goes on to show just how big a violation of law and ethics this was.


Also, in a fine example of "What're you going to believe, what happened or what I'm telling you?"
Undisputed Facts: The RCMP forced their way into locked homes in High River Alberta during the recent flood causing various amounts of property damage to those homes in the process. According to the RCMP themselves: "there were about 1,900 reports of damage caused by entry during the flood."

But in-spite of these well documented and undisputed facts, Premier Alison Redford has come out with an alternate reality from what did happen in High River, and is claiming that she was unaware of any property damage that was caused by the RCMP forcing entry into hundreds(?) of locked homes.

Tab clearing Updated on Colorado

Partly because 'loads of stuff', partly because I don't like IE.

You go to war with the clowns you've got.


Everybody involved in this 'drug scan' mess should be fired.  And disbarred if they're lawyers.  Utterly disgusting.


During his time in the White House, President Obama has repeatedly demonstrated a style of decision making that gets him in trouble. Especially when the stakes are high and the issue is complex, the President overthinks himself and tries to split the difference between tough policy choices. He comes up with stratagems that work beautifully on paper and offer well reasoned, moderate alternatives to stark choices. Unfortunately, they usually don’t work all that well in the real world, with the President repeatedly ending up in the "sour spot" where his careful approaches don’t get him where he needs to go.


The recall's tomorrow in Colorado, and guns aren't the only thing driving them.
More at OGAM.  Including how much money Bloomberg & Co. are pouring in.
And they'd better be watching for fraud, because if you don't believe these bastards will cheat, well, would you like to buy some seafront property in the panhandle?
Update: yep, they're cheating.


Yeah, our President is a great job creator, long as you like part-time jobs.


On another note, I'd say the NSFW experiment has, so far, been a success; so further trials will follow.
 

Kilted gets some real attention

on local news.


Gallatin, TN PD: they get a great big armored vehicle, because SWAT!
It’s not a $#%(ing Christmas present. It’s a piece of military equipment that you have absolutely no need for. We in the gunnie community often say “what’s need got to do with it” in regards to firearms, but the huge difference here is that we won’t be using our evil assault-style clips to knock down people’s houses for fun and profit. 

Gallatin has about 30,000 residents. They have 15 SWAT raids a year. How many times last year did one of those raids involve “somebody trying to hurt [Gallatin SWAT]“? Of those, how many involved the suspect actually shooting at officers? Of those, how many involved the suspect shooting at the bullet-resistant vehicle they already have? And finally, out of those incidents where suspects who were intent on hurting Gallatin SWAT and actually opened fire and actually hit the armored vehicle they already have do so with a weapon capable of penetrating that vehicle?
None?

Okay, how about we expand that to the last ten years? Twenty?

Has there ever been an incident where this $700,000 vehicle would have made any difference whatsoever?


But- but building guns takes a FACTORY and stuff!  Somebody can't do that in their garage, CSGV says so!


Steyn on the self-censorship(and cowardice) of much of the liberal media:
Let me return the compliment: I have over the years developed a dislike for Richard Dawkins’s forceful writing (the God of the Torah is “the most unpleasant character in all fiction,” etc.), but I am coming round rather to admire him personally. It’s creepy and unnerving how swiftly the West’s chattering classes have accepted that the peculiar sensitivities of Islam require a deference extended to no other identity group. I doubt The Satanic Verses would be accepted for publication today, but, if it were, I’m certain no major author would come out swinging on Salman Rushdie’s behalf the way his fellow novelist Fay Weldon did: The Koran, she declared, “is food for no-thought … It gives weapons and strength to the thought-police.”

That was a remarkably prescient observation in the London of 1989. Even a decade ago, it would have been left to the usual fire-breathing imams to denounce remarks like Dawkins’s. In those days, Islam was still, like Christianity, insultable. Fleet Street cartoonists offered variations on the ladies’ changing-room line “Does my bum look big in this?” One burqa-clad woman to another: “Does my bomb look big in this?” Not anymore. “There are no jokes in Islam,” pronounced the Ayatollah Khomeini, and so, in a bawdy Hogarthian society endlessly hooting at everyone from the Queen down, Islam uniquely is no laughing matter.

It should be noted that Blogger has bloogered things up

and I currently can't sign in using Firefox.  Effing morons, no telling what they've done.

If you know someone planning on college, this

should be required reading.  As in 'chain their ass in a chair and don't let them up till they've read every word.'
My experience, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as fulfilling or eclectic. Like the unambitious sloth that I am, I got into my car at the age of 20 and drove 150 miles to a place I’d never been, in a state I’d never visited. I rented an apartment with my own money and got a job at a radio station and a second job as an assistant manager at a pizza joint. I met and learned how to work with people from all different age groups and backgrounds. I set out specific goals for myself and worked to achieve them.

Needless to say, without college, it was all in vain. Seven years later and now look at me. It’s the classic tale of failure and despair: Married, two kids, a career, a long term plan for the future, no debt, and I’ve never been unemployed. Please, avert your gaze. I am so ashamed.

This is what happens when politicians in uniform

lose track of what they're actually supposed to do.
The Marine Corps has suddenly dropped criminal charges against an officer in the infamous Taliban urination video case, heading off what promised to be an embarrassing pre-trial hearing for the commandant on Wednesday.

Defense attorneys for Capt. James V. Clement had won a judge’s order, over objections from Marine prosecutors, for two staff attorneys to testify in open court about how senior commanders had interfered in the case to get a guilty verdict.
...
The defense attorney said he wanted to see email traffic between the commandant, his counsel and his legal division.

“That email traffic would have revealed that [the commandant] and his lawyers had engaged in a secret, corrupt effort to rig and control the investigations and dispositions of the so-called desecration cases until Capt. Clement refused to submit to a corrupt process [of being] charged with crimes he did not commit,” he said.

Capt. Clement’s defense counsel obtained a sworn statement from Lt. Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, who had been overseeing all urination cases as the convening authority. He told of a one-on-one meeting in 2012 with Gen. Amos in which the commandant said he wanted Marine defendants “crushed” via courts-martial.
And if you don't think this news will screw morale in the Corps...

The Experiment Continues

Next phase a little ways down